In today's edition Jan Velinger's guest is Ken Nash - a well-known
illustrator, designer, and humorist whose work has been featured in
publications around the world, including the English-language weekly, the
Prague Post. His extensive design work has also included clients like
Czech beer manufacturer Pilsner Urquell. Aside from drawing many
illustrations, greeting cards, and cartoons, Ken also regularly organises
the Alchemy Reading & Performance series here in the Czech capital -
the open mic is something that has always been popular among ex-pats in
Prague and it's what Ken discusses first. Here's Ken Nash - in One on One.

"There's been a history of English-language events- open mic - in
Prague since 1992. And a friend of mine asked me if I too could get
something together. I had this idea of changing the open mic to also
include a feature segment in which people could perform for a longer
period of time and we could bring performers to Prague, exposing the
audience to new ideas and new works in progress. I think it was part of
being part of this community here, something I just do for the fun of it,
I don't get paid for it, but it's helping to nurture something for the
community and it's important for me to be a part of that."

Do you find then that it brings together English speakers from
different
walks of life? You have your English teachers, business people,
artists...

"Certainly a lot of English teachers! Also artists and professional
writers who come: we've had some amazing people who've come, not just from
around Prague, but from England, the U.S., Poland, Hungary, and so
on."

Is there any performance - perhaps even your own - that sticks out in
your
mind?

"There have been quite a number: we had this performer from the U.K.,
Attila the Stockbroker, he does music and spoken word and is just an
amazing, powerful presence. We've had successful novelists who came and
performed; and then once in a while it's just a backpacker who shows up
and just performs something incredibly moving. Those are some of the
best."

It must be terribly nerve-wracking: you come up for the first time
and
there's dozens of people sitting around drinking and expecting you to
deliver.

"Um, someone recently gave me some advice - performer friends who
were passing through town - and I asked about this because I was getting
really nervous and what they told me was that when you're up on stage and
you are performing, you are no longer the person who created that work.
You are the performer and you can not think about the editing process, you
can not think about whether this is good or not, you have to think about
the performance and be a performer, and learn to separate those two
things."

Okay. Despite some funny rumours circulating on the internet that you
were
raised by Mongolian circus workers, you do come from the U.S., and I
wanted
to ask you how you came to Prague...

"If I tell this story it's going to sound a little bit ridiculous,
and at the time I realised it was a little a bit ridiculous thing to do;
but I was also at a point when I just wanted to do something ridiculous! I
had been working in Chicago in advertising as a writer and producer and I
liked the work, didn't necessarily like the industry, but I couldn't
imagine myself working as a writer in the advertising industry for the
rest of my life. And I didn't know what the next step was. And I had this
dream one night that I was living in Prague and the next morning that was
it! It was like 'why not?'. I knew almost nothing about Prague, but I was
ready to do something out of the blue, not necessarily permanently but
just something to kind of break up my life. And, I thought 'I could go to
Prague'! I immediately made plans to get on a flight, put my things in
storage, and headed off. It was just totally out of the blue. But, it
ended up being the best thing I could have ever done."

Difficult question, but, what were the aspects of life here that
helped
you make up your mind to stay for as long as you have?

"One of the main things is just the 'physicality' of the city itself.
There's something about the city's architecture, its streets, the
lighting,
the way the sun changes, that I just find incredibly inspiring and
evocative. As corny as that may sound, but it is something about the
physicality of the city. And the other thing is that there's just
something about the atmosphere in Prague where almost anything can happen.
You don't feel hemmed in too much, you feel like you can take risks here
and try things, and if by chance you fail it doesn't matter, you're not
going to crash too badly. It's been a good city for trying things,
experimenting."

What about from the perspective of being a cartoonist or an
illustrator or
a graphic designer: is there, say, a healthy market for all of those jobs
here? Or does it matter today, considering so much is over the
internet?

"Um, it actually doesn't matter that much. I do a lot of my work over
the internet, I have a lot of U.S. clients, so illustration now, over the
internet is pretty universal. I do a lot of animation work for greeting
cards which are viewed in Europe, in the U.S., in Japan, Israel ... I get
letters from all over."

When you live in a different place as an expatriate, as a foreigner
abroad, it's inevitable that that experience away also changes you; in
what ways have you been changed by this country?

"I think just the experience of being an expatriate, living outside
of your native land, is in some ways a little bit freeing. I remember the
Polish poet Czeslaw Miloscz, who was living in the U.S. for quite a long
time teaching at Berkeley, and he had said something about how it's a
natural part of most peoples' lives to feel a little bit alienated, this
existential anxiety of feeling like you don't quite fit in. And, when
you're in your own home country and feel that way it just feels like a
dysfunctional part of your mind. But, when you're living in a foreign
country it's almost like it feels 'normal', it's like you have an excuse
for feeling like you don't fit in {laughs}. So, I know I don't completely
'fit in' but I'm okay with that!"

Back to the illustration and the cartoons: were you inspired by
design and
illustrations from this region?

"From this region, yes. Especially the modernists, design-wise, yeah:
Karel Tiege and Ladislav Sutnar and others. That's very inspiring for my
design work and there's a lot of energy in that type of work. Um, and the
humour in the Czech Republic, maybe I do identify with it a little bit.
There's sort of a darkness to it which my own sense of humour responds
to."

And American cartoonists?

"I would say Gary Larson was a major influence: growing up I loved
Gary Larson back when everyone didn't understand him {laughs}; I thought
he was amazing. I mean, he broke ground compared to where most cartoonists
were at, when he started publishing nationally. He was doing stuff that
was
so off the wall and was darker and sometimes creepier than a lot of the
cutesy cartoons that were out there at the time."

I'd like to mention some of the greeting cards that you've done that
I've
enjoyed and maybe you could tell me about one of the latest ones you've
worked on. On your website I noticed this little story about a vampire
who's kind of lonely and drinking [blood of course] - the point there
being don't spend Hallowe'en alone. Have there been any new greeting cards
that you've been working on?

"Yeah, I'm constantly working on greeting cards: this morning I was
working on a font for a card that is non-humorous, very sentimental, I try
to extend my range sometimes."

Okay. Is there a limit where you won't go?

"Um... no! {laughs}"

Let me ask you this: when you're working in design, how often would
it be
through a computer programme and how often would it be free-hand?

"It's both. For me it's important to be able to do both. I'll sketch
out ideas, sometimes I'll draw them by hand, then scan them, and then put
them up on the computer. And, I also do a lot of work just for fun, a lot
of drawing around Prague. I'll take my sketchbook out and go out onto the
streets and draw buildings and people. I enjoy doing that."

I'm going to round it up by returning to the topic with which we
started -
the open mic - apparently you've been working on short stories {some of
which have been read on mic] called "The Brain Harvest". I
wondered if you could give us a bit of a teaser about that that book and
whether it will be published...

"Um, we will see if it will be published! The title story is about
this man who works on this farm. He...runs out of money while he's
travelling and he finds temporary work at a fram with a bunch of
immigrants from Mexico, harvesting these crops. Which are 'brains'! And,
the brains are then shipped off to universities for students to use.
And... life gets really bad on the brain farm and he decides to escape one
night and he takes a couple brains with him. And he travels around and he
finds that the two brains he stole are actually quite useful for him to,
one, be very successful in the casinos, and the other, for him to be able
to foresee events a little bit into the future. That's basically how the
story begins."